I would like to remind you that God never left Himself unrevealed to the nations and to the Gentiles. The Apostle Paul, several times, repeats that idea. Remember, in the letter to Romans, Paul asks the question, “Is God only the God of Israel or the God of the nations? I say to you, yes, He is the God of the nations, as well.” And Paul said to the people of Lystra (who had thought that Paul was a Greek god) that although the real God, led the nations to take their own ways (that means they turned their back to him) He never unwitnessed Himself to them by doing good to them from above. And also remember the Apostle John. In his first chapter of the gospel, John says that Jesus is the light who enlightens every single one, without exception, who comes on this road.
So what we are going to say for the Athenian democracy played a very important role that happened only once in human history, In a certain time in history, Athenian democracy prepared the Mediterranean world, the first international community in history, to become the first mission field. For the gospel became the plow on the head of that crazy young Boy of 20 years old called Alexander the Great, to cultivate the world for the time of the Septuagint and the New Testament.
Until seventh century BC, the world did not know any other political system except monarchy. The world had a lot of styles and types of monarchy, and most of the monarchs were personalities that were worshiped, considered the be demigods or gods on earth. There were the Pharaohs of Egypt, or the great kings of Persia.
But then, after the 8th century BC, Greeks spread out in all of the Mediterranean world and the Black Sea, and they had smaller and bigger states.
Remember, there were Greek states from Spain to the Middle East and from the Black Sea to Northern Africa. Greece in antiquity, means culture. It doesn’t mean a certain state, like today.
And yes, these states prior to the seventh century BC had monarchy, but these Greek kings were always considered to be mortals – descendants of gods or heroes, but mortals. Being the leaders of their society, they were considered the chief generals, leading their army personally to the battlefield.
And so the ancient Greeks were friends with their kings who died on the battlefield and never on the bed. The kings were also the leaders of religion which means they were high priests.
So when we hear the title King-priest, definitely this title applies to a Greek style of monarchy.
That brings to mind, the monarchy of Israel, a monarchy established late in history, yes, at the beginning of the first millennium BC. All the other nations, including the Greeks, had monarchy since the second millennium BC. Definitely in the house of David all were considered nothing else but mortals. They we are not priests, because priesthood in Israel preexisted monarchy and was from another tribe.
So when we say King-priest, we mean a Greek title, although that in the Bible, we have a unique case of a personality, a mysterious, holy personality, described as the king-priest of the Most High God. He is Melchizedek.
We don’t know a lot about him. In the New Testament, Melchizedek is described as a prefiguration of Jesus Christ. And the question is, how does this man have this title of king-priest? Only indirectly we can give an answer. Melchizedek was a neighbor, not only with Abraham, but with another king as well, who was related with Abraham. And this king was Abimelech, the king of the Philistines. And the Bible says that the Philistines went to the Middle East from the Aegean Sea, especially from the island of Crete, and that gives an answer about the relation the Aegean Sea had with the Middle East.
A monarchy, as we see it (until the seventh century BC) among the Greeks started in the middle of the second millennium BC, after the collapse of the Minoan civilization. And this is the time when the Acropolis appeared as a place and as an institution to become the palace sanctuary of the King- priest.
And remember, we spoke about the definition of the root word/term acro, summit, an edge (from which we have acrophobia and acrobats) and the term polis, which in Greek means city.
So at the seventh century BC, in Athens, the king under peaceful circumstances (not very clear to us today) decided to give up his administrative duties, but he kept for himself the title of King and his priestly duties. And the administration, for the first time in history, went from the hands of one person to the hands of a group of people, the Royal Council. And so we have another political system called oligarchy, administration by a few people.
Next century, sixth century BC, a man called Pisistratus was a member of that council and he made a coup. Overthrowing the power of the others, he became dictator in Athens.
Now Greeks hated dictators, and called them tyrants, and they called the dictatorship a tyranny. But the tyrant of Athens, Pisistratus, spent a lot of money (his personal wealth and his family’s wealth) on the city. He built a new aqueduct which brought water into the city and that changed the daily life of the Athenians. Pisistratus was the first one who built a natural temple upon the ruins of the Acropolis, dedicated to the patron goddess of the city, Athena. And he reorganized the session. so Pisistratus finally was accepted.
When he died, his power passed to the hands of his two sons, Hippias and Hipparchus, who were not wise like their old father and so very soon after they got power, they brought the state of Athens to the edge of civil war. Around 520 BC, there were riots during the festivals of the city, and the older son was assassinated. Then eight years later, the younger son was expelled from the city and the city remained totally scandalized. That brought a worse situation to the city, because the strong families tried to impose their own rulers. They started organizing the assassination of prominent members of other families, and the situation in Athens became anarchy, the worst that can happen to a society.
Four years later, at 508 there was a nobleman called Cleisthenes, a man who was unknown, a low-profile man who organized, in the middle of the square, the first meeting with political significance on this place. This was the first act, related with the agora, for political meeting,
Cleisthenes gathered all the Athenian men over 20 years old to the square, and made a dramatic speech. He told them, “If we continue being under anarchy, after a while, none of us is going to be alive. But, you know, look around this place. It is a poor place surrounded by the sea. And if there is a value here, it is you, the living body of the city. The value is not the rocks, nor the sea. And so we have to find a way, not just to co-exist, but to cooperate harmoniously like the members of the human body. And this is the first time in history when a group of people, the assembly of the Athenian citizens, was compared to the human body. The Greek word describing the human body is demas δέμᾰς, and another word Kratos κράτος means power and state, It was the formation of a new term, a term which described a new political system, democracy.
Democracy means the power and state of the body of the assembly. And this concept, the concept of the body, and the harmonious cooperation of all the members of the body, follows the meaning of democracy.
Today we use the term democracy, but we use it to describe a republic, a representative democracy. The Athenian democracy was direct democracy. Public life was for all citizens, as expressed in daily life in two ways mainly. Firstly, there were annual elections in the city. And instead of creating a ballot, they erected a lottery machine for each Civic office, and then, all Athenian citizens were welcome, if interested, to be candidates – to put their name in the lottery machines. And so all the Athenian citizens had the same possibility for one year to become the rulers of their own place. And that was for all citizens, the shepherd, the grocer, the teacher, the artist.
This was really revolutionary and extremely important because it elevated the value of the simple human being from almost nowhere to the most high stage of authority – thus equalizing the Athenian citizen, the simple human being, with the rulers and the kings of the world.
Never before has any human society had such an achievement. This was the introduction of concepts like human rights, equality in front of the law, and the right of speech. These are the foundations of the Western culture today. So when we say democracy, we mean direct participation of all citizens based on free will. The authority of the state became the assembly of the citizens who had the final word.
But this is not the most important. There is something else which makes the Athenian citizens exceptional. Every Athenian citizen had the right to stand in front of the assembly and to deliver a speech. For that reason, a little platform in the square was erected, just one step higher from ground level and it was called step. The word step in Greek is bema βήμα. Every Athenian was allowed to step upon the Bema to deliver a speech whenever he thought it was very important for the public life of the city for all the citizens.
When we say everybody had that right, we have to think about time, because the assembly couldn’t stay in the middle of the square all day, listening to people who might never end their speaking. For that reason, next to the speaker, on the side of the Bema, a water clock was placed which gave the citizen a certain amount of time to speak, which was determined to be six minutes.
In six minutes the speaker should say whatever he had to say. Otherwise, he was interrupted, and his place was given to the next speaker, and he was very, very ashamed to be interrupted.
So, before an Athenian decided to step upon the Bema to deliver that speech to the assembly, they had to think twice, to be well prepared, to find the certain words, to count the time, to practice their performance at home, to be sure that the speech would not last longer or less than six minutes. And in this speech, he had to say everything.
What caused a speaker to offer an opinion upon the bema (βήμα) ? It was a problem he had seen in the common life of the city, and he was the first to describe the problem. But that was not enough. The problem was possibly obvious to many. Through arguments the speaker developed his wisdom in front of the assembly and proposed a solution. That was the most important, he had to be persuasively expressive, and finally, he had to present in front of the assembly his credentials – that he was a loyal citizen to the body, working not for his own benefit, but for the benefit of the body. For that reason, Athenian speech of six minutes upon the bema in front of the assembly had five very important characteristics, reason, wisdom, expression, persuasion and credibility. The name of this speech is Logos.
Location where Logos was delivered: The Bema of Athens:

Now, this term was not used for the first time in Athens. The first person who used the term Logos, almost a century prior to this process of Athens, was the philosopher Heraclitus at the city of Ephesus in Asia minor.
Heraclitus used the term logos, with the meaning of logic, The Supreme Logic in name, with that, the first reason of creation.
Heraclitus was one of the thinkers of Asia Minor of sixth century BC, who decided to find the origins of nature apart from the myths of creation. In seeking and studying nature, the thinkers arrived at the conclusion that behind nature is the great mind. (A special man of Athens developed his activity in this square as well, and his name is Socrates.)
At sixth century BC between the cities Ephesus and Miletus, thinkers started doubting seriously the creation myths, and myth was not enough for them to explain nature. They had decided to find the origins of nature apart from myth. By studying nature, the thinkers arrived at the conclusion that nature is not compartmentalized, it is not in pieces, but is unique, a chain from the very small to the very big and they found mathematics everywhere. They discovered that all living nature (plants, animals and humans) in their outer form has the same tendency to fulfill the same mathematical formula.
Whis formula is 2x + 1/x, and possibly you have been taught about this formula in school.
For example, this length divided by this is the same as this length divided by this – and the same with the leaves of the plants, the same with the body parts of an animal. Nature has the tendency to fulfill this formula. Because of that tendency, living nature has to fulfill this formula.
The thinkers considered this formula to be the expression of harmony and the expression of the ideal. And they called this formula the Golden Ratio or Divine Ratio. And they were the first who saw nature as a mathematical artifact, and they called nature “jewel.” The Greek word for jewel is cosmos. So they were the first who called Nature cosmos.
Now, these people tested the formula from the concrete test to the abstract by saying, “If this is a jewel, a single mathematical artifact, then who is the cosmos maker? The jewel maker is the artist behind this mathematical artifact.” And they answered this question, “It definitely should be a mind, or several minds, that can function mathematically in a way parallel to the human mind.” This is why we have a sort of communication through mathematics. The second question was, “Is the jewel maker one or more than one mathematical mind? And they answered this question, “Several minds see the same reality from a different point of view. And in art that destroys harmony, and this is the reason every single artifact is signed by a single artist expressing his own personality (since the beginning of art history, until today.)
For that reason, the thinkers arrived at a conclusion: Behind this jewel called Cosmos, (nature) behind these mathematical artifacts, there should be one mathematical mind. They called that mind, the Great Mind. Heraclitus identified this mind with the term logos (from which we have the terms logic and logistics.) This great mathematical mind, the logos of Heraclitus was not identified with the gods of the myth. And this is the root of the concept of the Great Mind the Logos, the Unknown God, the Creator.
Athenians used the term logos to describe their speech, and they gave the term logos, five characteristics, reason, wisdom, expression, persuasion and credibility. It is not by chance that some centuries later, the discussion about logos came to the same city from where the discussion started, the city of Ephesus. The Apostle John, in the year 95 AD, used the term logos to identify Jesus of Nazareth. John said that this logos, spoken about by the ancient thinkers as the great mind, had an identity, a human identity, Jesus of Nazareth.
Everyone, in that time, who heard the term logos, automatically had in his mind, without a second thought, the 5 characteristics of speech – that Jesus was God’s reason, wisdom, and expression (that means not a messenger like the prophets of the Old Testament, but the message itself) God’s persuasion and credibility to us. Athenian democracy contributed the Apostle John’s terminology, structure and images. Concepts that had been cultivated in the eastern Mediterranean world for centuries were ready to be used in the day of the gospel.

Now, at the year 500 BC, more or less this square here became a busy place. Administrative work, religious and commercial work took place here. So the assembly did not have a quiet place to sit down to discuss law projects, external policy, the province of the army and other major pieces as the supreme authority of the state. For that reason they tried to find another place, one that was more quiet, outside of the residential area, but inside the walls.
And that place was a rock called Pnyx, (which is behind the houses in the middle of the trees) a rock like a short cliff and they started having their meetings at the top of this rock.
Because they had regular and irregular meetings at the top of this rock, state messengers would call them out from the residential area to meetings at the top of the rock. And this is why the meetings of the Athenian assembly after 500 BC, we are called the meetings of the called-out ones. The term in Greek is Ekklesia εκκλησία. Ek means out. Ecclesia means to be called out. This term was chosen by Jesus Christ to describe the body of His own believers as the ones who are called out from this world.
And when Jesus first used the term in Matthew’s gospel, he related the term with the illustration of the rock. He changed the name of Simon to Peter, saying with other words, “I’m going to build My own church, not on a natural rock like the ancient Athenians had and is there, but on a spiritual rock, your testimony Simon, that I am the Son of God.”
As you understand, it was not easy for every Athenian to step upon the Bema and to deliver the logos.

The shepherd, the artist, the grocer and the teacher did not have the same ability to step upon the bema, the platform, to express themselves in six minutes. So the second, the third generation of Athenians, after democracy was established, felt the need of more education. This is what made Athens very attractive to the teachers of the whole area. Teachers came to Athens ready to get paid well to teach the Athenians how to stand in front of the assembly.
But as you know, democracy was based mainly on ethics and morals, and of secondary importance was the ability of expression, sharing our thoughts. But these teachers were focused on the art of the speech, and not morality and ethics. And this is why in Athens at that time, the idea developed that good and truth have relative meanings, subjective meanings, not objective. For example, my truth and my good might be not yours, but the important thing for me is to persuade you to my truth and my good. The disciples of these teachers were the famous demagogues (political leaders who sought support by appealing to the desires and prejudices of ordinary people rather than by using rational argument) and finally they destroyed the Athenian democracy.
In Athens, in reaction to that situation created by the teachers, there was a sculptor. He was around his 40’s. He decided, in total poverty, to punish himself and his family, and he came to the streets of Athens in this square, to meet the Athenians and the teachers. He came out, not presenting his knowledge but his ignorance. This man never had gone to a school. It is not mentioned that he was a disciple of somebody, but he became famous (and still is famous today) for saying, “I know only one thing, that I know nothing. So please, you, the specialists, come to teach me and give an answer to my questions.”
This man was Socrates.
At the end of the discussion, Socrates developed as an ignorant man with the specialists and usually proved that the ignorant man knew more than the specialists, something that we call today Socratian irony, but definitely that changed completely the teaching methods. By that time, the knowledge was delivered prefabricated, like we see in the Old Testament, bum bum bum. This is what the Lord said. But since Socrates, we have questions that need an answer, and this answer leads to the truth.
Socrates believed strongly that the truth and the good was not subjective, but objective, and stands out of the human. And the human has only one way to live his life, to address himself towards to the truth and the good, as the sunflower is addressed, always towards the sun.
Now this man, 30 years after, was arrested in Athens, and given the death penalty accused of corrupting the Athenian youth with his ideas. His prison was discovered, where he finally was executed. He did nothing to defend himself. When the time came and the punishment was announced to him, he had a last opportunity to defend himself. He compared Athenian Society (provoking kindly the Athenians) to a fat, sleeping horse and himself as a horse fly. He said to the Athenians, “It’s easy for you to sleep than to kill flies, but you are going to stay sleeping until the day when God is going to be merciful on you and send from above somebody to awake you.” Because of festivals in the city his execution was postponed for one month. During that month, one of his rich friends, Crito, spent a lot of money and he bribed all the Athenian administration from the most high to the servants of the prison. Then he went to Socrates and told him, “Socrates, let’s go. We are going to leave from here, you are free.” Socrates was surprised and said to him, “How is that possible? I’m expecting my executor.” “I bribed everybody,” was the answer. Then the two friends started a dialog about the importance of the law, even bad law. [And it’s worth it for you to read it. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27743706. For Socrates, the objective truth and the objective good for him actually was to stay in prison and to die. Crito lost all the money he had given to bribe the Athenian administration. Every day Socrate’s disciples came to the prison to speak with him. On the last day they were all gathered outside of the gate of the prison before dawn, waiting for the prison to open the gates (and so to pass that day from dusk until when the execution was planned, with their teacher.) When the gate opened, they blushed to tears, and started crying when they saw Socrates from the other side. And Socrates, very cool and surprised, asked, “What happened to you? Why are you so sad? Why do you cry?” And they said, “Are you crazy? You don’t know that we are living as orphans with your decision to die…”
And there starts one of the most beautiful dialogs, the last dialog of Socrates, related with the immortality of the soul in the fair judgment in Hades.
The title of this dialog is Phaedo. https://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedo.html In Phaedo you can see the logical process and the arguments of a man who lived almost 450 years before Christ, how he thinks about the soul, the mortality of the soul, and the fear of judgment. In the dialog one of his disciples who was arguing with him asked, “How do you know that? How do you know all of what you say about the soul?” Socrates answered with this really impressive example. Fish in the sea think and consider the level of the water as the sky, and from the water they see the storms, and the environment deteriorated by the sun and salt. But there are some little fish who can jump a little bit out of the water, and these fish know that the sky is not the surface of the water, and that the stones have another color than the deteriorated stones they see in the water.
In a very, very special place – the agora, in the middle of first century AD, someone was sent from above, and his message arrived in Athens on the face of the Apostle Paul. He met the Athenians and especially the Athenian philosophers. As Socrates had said, “God is going to be merciful on you and send from above somebody to awaken you.” Some of them woke up.
This round building is called Tholos and this one is considered to be the oldest round public building for political use, and was the center of the Athenian government. In Greece there are several round buildings I would like to point out: The Octagon of Philippi, the round Church of Thessaloniki (the Rotunda) and The Octagon of Capernaum.

Inside of the Tholos, couches were set all around. Remember in the chapel of Lydia, also was round. The emphasis was equality, not who was in front with the rest behind him, or who faced the others or the majority, or who faced the supreme people. The Athenian had to remember always they were among equals, and some of them had the opportunity to have the title of King priest – which in Athens became an elective position, and every Athenian could be a candidate at the time of democracy. And remember the Book of Revelation, when the Apostle John says that we are all redeemed by the blood of Jesus, and we are king priests, a royal priesthood.
So here we have the building of the Athenian government. It is called Tholos.

In the middle you see the broken altar of Hestia. Hestia was the goddess of the family and her sanctuary, in every home, was the fireplace. In the city was the eternal flame, the flame which represented the life of the city. So this altar was kept from night to day with the internal flame. Here is the Altar of Eternal Flame:

Just beside there, we have the foundations of the building where the representatives of the Athenian tribes prepared their law projects. Remember, law projects had to be discussed and voted on by the assembly.

And going further here we see this sign on this wall, House of Simon.

Now, who was Simon? First of all, the name Simon is not a Greek name. It is a Jewish name. And this person is a shoemaker of fifth century BC, and we know from Xenophon that in Simon’s workshop, (which was discovered here) Socrates met mostly his minor disciples. We don’t know if Simon was a Jew or an Athenian who had a Jewish name. Remember, two of Jesus disciples had Greek names: Philip and Andrew. Definitely. Simon is the first one who kept notes from the Socratian dialogs. And after Socrates death, he was the first who published them. Unfortunately, we don’t have any of the writings of Simon the shoemaker.


Very important for the daily life of the city of Athens, during the time of democracy, is the monument which is behind a fence.

At the top of a long pedestal were placed the statues of the heroes who gave their names to the Athenian tribes. On the pedestal of this monument were made all the announcements private and public, and so every opinion coming out every morning from his home came here to be informed.

For the ancient Athenians, everything related with the private or the public life was announced here, weddings, funerals. After the law was voted, the law was published here for three days before it became the tool of the courts. So every Athenian, regardless if was a member of the assembly, had participated in the discussion about the law, had to be aware of the law. Then the law become a tool for judgments in the court.

Since the time of the Athenian democracy, the city of Athens became the center of the teachers, the center of culture and education. And a lot of prominent people of the Mediterranean world were proud to study in Athens. Among them were kings and princes from Asia Minor (Hellenistic period) and a lot of Roman emperors. Hadrian, Octavian Augustus, Marcus Aurelius, Antoninus Pius and many other emperors came to study in Athens.
And all these dignitaries, after finishing their studies in Athens were proud to leave behind infrastructure and monuments as a sign of their gratitude – first, for the culture the city gave to them, and also as a signature that they studied in Athens.

So during the late first century BC, beginning of first century AD, at the northern part of the square there was a big complex, The Odeion of Agrippa.

You see the ruins here, the foundations erected by Agrippa. He was related with a family of Octavian Augustus. Agrippa built a new auditorium for Athens. Athens had another auditorium, the theater. And now this gentleman offered the city a new one, the Auditorium of Agrippa.





This complex here was not here at the time of democracy. All of this area was a part of the square, and the Apostle Paul was at the same place, wandering in the square. Remember what the New Testament says about the Athenians? They did nothing else but discuss the new things.

Olympic Stadium
